Flood mitigation process will be slow

Controlling flooding in the village of
Minden will be a long, drawn out process.

While that's not what residents wanted
to hear, that was the overarching message during a post-flood public
meeting at the Minden Hills Community Centre on the evening of July
18.

More than 100 people attended Tuesday's
meeting, where they had the chance to ask officials, including those
from the Trent Severn Waterway, the MNRF, the health unit and Minden Hills township,
about the flood that left the municipality in a state of emergency
from May 6 to 26.

Jewel Cunningham, director of Ontario
Waterways for Parks Canada, the agency which oversees the Trent
Severn Waterway, traced the impetus of this year's flood to a week of
rainfall in late April and early May that saw nearly 129 millimetres
of precipitation fall on the area. Average rainfall for the entire
month of May is less than 100 millimetres.

At the time, the reservoir lakes north
of Minden that are part of the feeder system for the Trent Severn
Canal were already at or near capacity, leaving no storage room for
the latest downpour.

“What we had to deal with this year,
was a significant amount of rainfall,” Cunningham said, showing
graphs compiled from data Parks Canada collects from gauges
throughout the waterway.

That rainfall followed two earlier
precipitation events in April. The data also showed that most months
of 2017 have far exceeded averages for precipitation levels and that
May witnessed more than twice its average amount of rainfall.

At its peak, this year's flood saw the
level of the Gull River through Minden five centimetres lower than
the 2013 flood. While the 2013 flood was caused by rainfall
coinciding with the spring freshet, this year's flood occurred after
the snow had melted.

“Unfortunately, the TSW is really not
designed to be an effective flood mitigation system,” Cunningham
said, emphasizing that when Mother Nature brings the amount of
precipitation she did this spring, there is simply no room left in
the system to store water.

The feeder system for the Trent Severn
Canal was constructed more than a century ago, before the shores of
the lakes and rivers of Haliburton County were dotted with homes.

Cunningham pointed out there was not
just flooding throughout the Trent Severn Waterway this spring, but
in many parts of Ontario, including Ottawa and on the Great Lakes.

While staff at Parks Canada use
precipitation averages and historical data as part of their
decision-making process when it comes to water management operations,
Cunningham admitted that climate change is altering the relevancy of
that data, and that the agency has more to learn when it comes to its
implications.

“There's always areas in which we can
consider future improvement,” she said. “Certainly, climate
change is one of those.”

A number of residents told Cunningham
they thought too much water was stored in the reservoir lakes in
Haliburton County and that stop logs at the dams throughout the
system should be put in later in the year.

Minden resident Patricia Walshe
referred to a report from engineering firm AECOM Canada that was
commissioned following the 2013 flood.

That report, which cleared Parks Canada
staff of any human error that may have led to the flood, included a
number of recommendations for future operations.

“Their recommendation to you at that
time, was that you have a much more advanced modelling system,”
Walshe said. “Have you done anything about the modelling system? Is
there a new modelling system being put in?”

Cunningham responded that the TSW has
had some work done on a water-flow modelling system.

“We are adding that to our toolbox in
order to make better decisions,” she said. “That is something
we've commenced.”

Cunningham said the system has not
reached the scale of the recommendations in the AECOM report, and
that there was some risk in making decisions based solely on digital
modelling.

“It's really a difficult system to
model, as well,” she said of the TSW.

Minden Hills Reeve and Haliburton
County Warden Brent Devolin has said he'd like to see lidar mapping
done throughout the area. Lidar mapping uses a laser-based system to
produce very detailed topographical images. Any flood mitigation
infrastructure projects in Minden – which he's stressed would
require the co-operation of, and funding from, the provincial and
federal levels of government – would be based on the lidar
mapping.

Meetings between cabinet ministers and
Devolin, along with Haliburton-Kawartha Lakes-Brock MP Jamie Schmale
and MPP Laurie Scott, are scheduled to take place at the Association
of Municipalities of Ontario conference in Ottawa in August.

Provincial Minister of Municipal
Affairs and Housing Bill Mauro visited Minden during flooding in May
and Devolin pointed out that Mauro is from Thunder Bay, a city that
has had its own problems with major floods in recent years

“He gets it,” said Devolin, who's
made it clear he expects to have some sort of agreement in place
between the municipality and the provincial and federal levels of
government regarding flood mitigation in the near future. “If we
don't, I may be done in this business.”

The municipality was recently approved
for funding for a drainage study through the National Disaster
Mitigation Program.

Devolin, who himself lives in a
flood-affected area, said he had neighbours who, this time around,
took preventative measures on their properties. He said that perhaps
residents should be looking at making alterations to their properties
and that while everyone may not be able to afford that, hinted that
perhaps some municipal assistance could be made available for such
projects.

He also suggested that floodplain
mapping and other such studies may lead to some results that
residents may not like. In some flood-affected communities, Devolin
used New Orleans as an example, properties deemed no longer suitable
for human habitation have been expropriated by local governments.

“We will identify properties that we
may have . . . to expropriate,” he said. “That's where this road
may lead.”

Some dams in Haliburton County are
being replaced through millions of dollars in federal funding. Some
$500 million is being spent on the rehabilitation of TSW
infrastructure, and some $59 million of that is being spent in the
county.

Devolin has credited a new dam at
Kennisis Lake for holding back more water than the old dam would have
and has indicated that when the dam at the foot of Gull Lake is
replaced, it will have more flow capacity than the current dam.

The dam at Horseshoe Lake is currently
under reconstruction.

Cunningham said that modern winching
systems on the new dams mean log operations can be completed quicker.

In all, water from 28 reservoir lakes
makes it way through the singular channel of the Gull River as it
passes through the village of Minden. Devolin also said at Tuesday's
meeting that he believes at some point, that channel will have to be
deepened and/or widened.

There was concern about raw sewage that
was put into the Gull River during the flood, as the township's
sewage treatment infrastructure was inundated with high levels.

Minden Hills environmental and property
operations manager Ivan Ingram confirmed that while sewage had been
bypassed into the river, it's a practice that is within the
regulations of the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change.

“It's not a practice that we like to
do, but it is a practice that is accepted by the MOECC,” Ingram
said. “And we have no choice.”

“People need to be notified,”
Walshe told him, emphasizing that residents of the river were not
aware of the sewage being put into its waters.

Ingram said that when the practice is
undertaken, the Haliburton Kawartha Pine Ridge District Health Unit
is notified by the township.

There seemed to be consensus among
residents that the 2017 flood was better handled by the township than
the 2013 flood.

Using an emergency plan that was
approved by council in 2016, a municipal control group that included
the reeve and deputy-reeve along with the township's senior staff,
had daily conference calls with reps from the TSW, MNRF and other
agencies.

Information from those meetings was
relayed to the public via press releases on the township's website
and through press conferences held throughout the time of the flood.

The township will also be making data
and information from Tuesday night's meeting publicly available on
its website and at the township administration office.

It was clear that action on flood
mitigation is not coming quickly enough for many residents.

Barry Cray, who owns Gordon A. Monk
Funeral Home with wife Kirsten Monk, told Devolin his business,
located along Bobcaygeon Road near its intersection with Deep Bay
Road, could not withstand another flood.

“In 2013, it cost me $600,000 to get
my place back in order, for a 100-year event,” Cray said. This
year, the damage was in the neighbourhood of $250,000, although the
business was able to get some help from its insurance company.

Cray said he must now build a berm on
the property.

“Nobody here seems to want to be
accountable,” he said. “What are we going to do? Do the math. I
cannot survive a third flood. I will be leaving town. . . We need
some structural change within this town and we need it down now.”

Devolin stressed that finding a
solution to flooding in Minden would be a long, complicated process
involving three levels of government.

“There is nobody on this earth who
can wave a wand and make that happen,” he said.

Resident Patrick Walshe said a common
definition of insanity was doing the same thing over and over and
over again, and expecting different results.

“We're hearing the same thing now we
heard four years ago,” Patrick said. “I'm sure everyone's doing
their job.”

“You're right, it's a political
decision,” Devolin said. “It begins with a political dialogue.
It's a joint responsibility. Nobody has the unilateral authority to
deal with that. It's going to take all three [levels of government]
dancing together.”

MP Jamie Schmale was in attendance and
also stressed that flood mitigation would require all three levels of
government working together, which is time-consuming.

“These things take time . . . things
are in process,” Schmale said. “The problem is, government
working together, it takes a while.”

The three-hour-long meeting was
mediated by former Times owner and publisher Jack Brezina.

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